Rental Car Holiday Price Gouging
I usually rent through Hertz with a USAA code for rentals of a couple days up to a week. Found out two days ago that I had to attend a funeral this Wednesday, so arranged flights ORD-DC out tomorrow (Tue) and back on Thu morning - Thanksgiving day. When I went to reserve a car at IAD, Hertz said nothing available. I checked Hertz at DCA, same story. Then I tried Avis, National, Budget, Alamo, even SilverCar - nada. Then I tried Thrifty; same story, but I got this odd response on their website: "NO RATES DUE TO SELL RULE FROM SOURCE." Huh...?
Then the light bulb goes on. I go back to Hertz and try again, but with the return date set for Friday - one day later. Still no cars. Then I try a return on Saturday and Voila! all the usual car classes pop up and at typical rates. So I make a reservation and will turn in the car two days early, paying about double at the pickup counter. I will continue to check for rate changes up to departure, and I will certainly squawk back to Hertz about this, but I assume it's not just them. Going back to the other companies with the same return date change might produce the same result.
No surprise that car rentals could be more expensive for last minute rentals at busy times. OK, I get that. But why pretend that no cars are available when they really just want more money? This is probably nothing new - I just never saw it before. Pretty stinky!